The swaying pulse of the Saharan journey
Old-school rock rebels or musical elders from the desert? This is Terakaft, a musical group that weaves raw sounds of minimal indie guitar rock into the swaying pulse of Saharan journeys to create a pleasant sound; they harness the energy of flirtatious midnight songs and the gems of respected advisors calling for peace and unity.
Known as Tuareg guitar warriors, Terakaft keeps alive the musical spirit honed by decades of oppression, rebellion, and exile on Aratan N Azawad.
Drawing on traditional forms of this Saharan nomadic people and filtered through an utterly fresh take on blues and rock, Terakaft (meaning caravan) moves through Tuareg history and a sea of sand to take the plight of their people to the world—in angular guitar licks and pulsating grooves.
Based in Mali, the core of Terakaft got it's start where it all begun: with the boot camp blues that became a musical liberation movement.
In hope of liberating their denigrated, divided people scattered over five African countries, some Tuaregs turned to violence, gaining military and ideological training from the Libyans.
But their casual blues jams in between training sessions soon inspired a better way to shake up the Tuareg world: trade the machine guns for electric guitars, following in the footsteps of Bob Marley and John Lennon.
The resulting music sparked a revolution all its own, as young Tuaregs embraced the new sound, simply called guitar in Tuareg, and began taking ancient call-and-response poetic forms and making them rock.
Terakaft leader Liya Ag Ablil (a.k.a. Diara) and the late Inteyeden (who like Diara once formed the core of Tinariwen) themselves began a new direction within that greater movement: They composed historical songs in the new rock style.
